Cybermobile fetches $25K at auction

Mobile library served 8 years but became too costly to maintain.

RIVIERA BEACH — For eight years, the Riviera Beach Public Library’s Cybermobile trundled through the city, from the Ocean Mall to the Indian Trace Apartments, bringing books, computer stations, free Wi-Fi and goodwill.

Snowbirds from Singer Island, young readers from the Fisher Boys & Girls Club, elderly email-checkers from Villa Franciscan, rich and poor, hopped on the bus for trips to places only books and computers could take them. Parents came, too, for books to encourage children to read.

Others used the Cybermobile for group meetings, with its projectors and computers, or came for computer assistance or to obtain library cards.

“We tried to mirror, as much as we could, what we have in the building,” library director Cynthia Cobb said.

Alas, the 2009 Glaval Apollo bus has run the last of its 6,443 miles, at least for the public library.

The city sold the six-cylinder diesel bus at auction Wednesday for $25,350, one-tenth of what it paid to buy and outfit the vehicle. Cobb said it wasn’t cost-efficient for city purposes and it required more maintenance than it made sense to pay for.

She hopes the city will assign money in next year’s budget to replace it, albeit with a smaller vehicle. “We’re still shopping around,” she said.

Back in the day, the city bought the bus, had it brightly painted and fitted with bookshelves and six computer stations.

It had regular stops on different days of the week for residents to take out a book, sit and read, or to get access to a computer with free internet, and made the rounds at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade and other city counciland school-sponsored events.

But it wasn’t cheap. Because the bus required a driver with a commercial license, the library used a part-timer. And there were maintenance issues. It needed repainting, for one, and the city replaced its generator, but there was more that needed doing.

“Nothing that could not be fixed, but for the long term, we concluded it was a better investment for us just to get something smaller,” Cobb said.

“Probably the biggest expense next to keeping the materials stocked on it (the rolling library had a fairly open-ended book-return policy) was the mechanical needs,” she said. That, despite

the fact the city is only 8 square miles.

Not everyone was a fan of the Cybermobile.

One resident, commenting on the Singer Island Pulse Facebook page, had spotted the public notice the bus was up for public auction and noted that the city had spent nearly $240,000 for the vehicle, computers, software and other fittings.

“It would have been cheaper to pick up people and take them to the main library than to buy this boondoggle,” the resident wrote.

“Like any other motor vehicle, as soon as you drive it off the lot, the value depreciates,” Cobb said.

While the cyberspace command vehicle was a burden on Riviera Beach finances, it was popular at auction. Thirty-nine people bid up the price from a first offer of $1,050 to the winner, identified on the auction website only as Martin17.

For the library, though, the mobile mission to provide free access to information, resources and technology will continue in the months ahead, Cobb said. “We want to stay open and remain as innovative as possible to keep up with what people’s needs really are.”